Schools

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (September 30, 2014) - U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today recognized five Arkansas schools as National Blue Ribbon Schools for 2014 based on their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups. These schools demonstrate that all students can achieve to high levels.

The Department will honor 287 public and 50 private schools at a recognition ceremony on Nov. 10-11 in Washington, D.C. In its 32-year history, the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program has bestowed this coveted award on just under 7,900 of America's schools.

Anticipation makes the air heavy and your palms sweaty. Your heart pounds a feverish rhythm against your chest. You’ve worked so hard for this, spent hours training and years perfecting your routines. And it all comes down to this single moment. What happens next determines if you leave with or without the title of “Miss Teen International.”

The emcee says your name, and the audience breaks out in applause. Time slows down, and you’re not sure what exactly is going on. Then you’re handed a bouquet of flowers, and time starts again. A smile stretches across your face as a crown is placed on your head and a sash is draped across you. It finally hits you. You are now the new “Miss Teen International.”

QUITMAN, Ark. (KTHV) – If you entered the Quitman High School gym on Friday, you would have seen a winter wonderland. A carpet of snow blanketed the gym floor, a machine pumped snow into the air, and one very popular song from the movie “Frozen” belted through the speakers as students and faculty gathered together to celebrate Emma Day.

What is Emma Day? It’s a very special celebration of one tough little girl who is battling stage-four osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. The Panama, Okla., native has been receiving treatments at UAMS right here in Little Rock and happened to meet one of Quitman’s teachers—Theresa Hawks—who was undergoing her own therapy for cervical cancer.

QUITMAN, Ark. (KTHV) – If you entered the Quitman High School gym on Friday, you would have seen a winter wonderland. A carpet of snow blanketed the gym floor, a machine pumped snow into the air, and one very popular song from the movie “Frozen” belted through the speakers as students and faculty gathered together to celebrate Emma Day.

What is Emma Day? It’s a very special celebration of one tough little girl who is battling stage-four osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. The Panama, Okla., native has been receiving treatments at UAMS right here in Little Rock and happened to meet one of Quitman’s teachers—Theresa Hawks—who was undergoing her own therapy for cervical cancer.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - Exams are a part of school life for your kids, but there is one that requires no studying but may cause a little anxiety: their annual scoliosis screening.

Parents can help prepare their children for this test and alleviate some of their pre-test stress.

Little Rock Family editor Heather Bennett is here to share some tips on how to get informed and ahead of the curve.

Scoliosis is just a rotational deformity of a child's backbone, when they're bent forward it could look almost like an S or a C. And your pediatrician or your school medical professional can check this out for you.

There are types of scoliosis. There's the idiopathic which has an unknown cause, and then there's congenital which your children would be born with, or a neuromuscular scoliosis which is caused by a medical condition that impacts the nerves or the muscles.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - One in five women is sexually assaulted on a college campus and often chooses not to report it. "There have been times in my life where that's none of my business type thing," Kalan Horton, a student at UALR says. But after the abduction and killing of a University of Arkansas at Little Rock student named Patricia Guardado, the university wanted everyone to feel responsible for changing the culture.

Dr. Erin Finzer with the Green Dot program says, "We know that traditional violence and crime prevention efforts that focus on perpetrators or victims don't really work because crime statistics haven't changed in 20 some odd years."

UALR is the first and only Arkansas school investing in resources to host the Green Dot program on a university campus. Finzer continues, "It's important for the bystander, for all of us, to feel empowered and able to intervene."

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (ADHE) – The number of students enrolled in higher education on the 11th day of classes in Arkansas is down one percent overall as compared to last fall, said officials with the Arkansas Department of Higher Education (ADHE) Thursday, with a total of 168,816 at both public and private schools.

“Final enrollment numbers won’t be available until after the semester ends,” said Shane Broadway, director of ADHE, “but we don’t expect big changes based on what we’ve been seeing the last couple years.

“Numbers are trending to what they were before the recession when many Arkansans lost their jobs,” Broadway continued, “and began looking for more opportunities by way of a higher education.”

The four-year universities saw an average increase in enrollment of 0.3 percent, while the two-year colleges saw a decrease in enrollment of 4.7 percent. Total public institution enrollment decreased by 1.5 percent.